Photo by Jesse Chambers
bham city hall_linn park 8-7-18
The north entrance to Birmingham City Hall.
BhamStrong — a public-private partnership formed in March to strengthen Birmingham’s response to COVID-19 — announced on Thursday, April 16, that it has formally launched the Birmingham Service Corps.
The Birmingham Service Corps will pay volunteers to work on projects that solve needs in the community related to the ongoing pandemic.
Anyone in the Birmingham community with a desire to serve or in need of paid hourly work is encouraged to apply for membership, according to a news release from BhamStrong and the city of Birmingham’s Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity.
As Service Corps projects become available, BhamStrong will contact the applicants, the release states.
Over the last two weeks, BhamStrong has tested pilot projects for the Birmingham Service Corps and successfully placed almost 100 unemployed workers into paid hourly job opportunities.
The pilots included a call center to phone-screen residents of 14 public housing communities for COVID-19 symptoms and a project to prepare and deliver about 12,000 free lunches for Birmingham City School students.
The new initiative is a partnership between the City of Birmingham and private donors.
The Birmingham City Council, at its meeting on April 14, approved an agreement to provide Birmingham Strong LLC with $1 million in city funding to run the employment program.
Mayor Randall L. Woodfin and Suzanna Fritzberg, the executive director of BhamStrong, said they believe the city’s $1 million allocation to the Corps will be federally reimbursed
The program not only addresses emergent needs in the community during the pandemic but helps to reduce unemployment, particularly for low-income and hourly workers, according to a council news release.
Other pilot projects have included the distribution of school supplies to 42 Birmingham City Schools and the use of shuttles approved by the health department to safely transport symptomatic patients to and from treatment.
For more information, go to bhamstrong.com.
To apply for temporary work through BhamStrong, click here.
